


Inpatient

by awkwardkermitfrog



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: Depression, Gen, mental illnes, psychiatry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-08-14
Packaged: 2018-12-09 03:48:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11661009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkwardkermitfrog/pseuds/awkwardkermitfrog
Summary: Link Neal is checked into an acute psychiatric ward for treatment of Major Depressive Disorder. While there he meets Rhett, his roommate during the stay. The two become friends in the unique way that can only happen in an enclosed, intimate environment.





	1. 1:28am

I found myself exhausted, walking down a hallway, following someone in a uniform, who I assumed to be an orderly or a nurse. I used the time to observe my surroundings carefully. The walls were a pale yellow color, separated from the carpet by a layer of plastic grey trim, which also ran up the doors and along the ceiling. It was not a place that was full of stimulus; instead, the occasional landscape and flower paintings seemed to be designed to drain the imagination rather than inspire it. The man to my front had a clip board, which I assume had my information. He looked at the clipboard from time to time while searching for the perfect room in which to interview me, walking past several blank, wooden doors, before he finally led me into a small room with a table and a few chairs and gestured for me to sit in one of them, which I did.  
“Tell me your name, please?” He asked as he sat down and got a pen out of his pocket. He looked at me expectantly as I stared into the carpet and searched for the shapes of faces and animals.   
“Charles Lincoln Neal the Third.” I said quietly. It had been a while since I’d spoken aloud, and it caused my throat to hurt a little. I disliked it.  
“Age?”   
“Nineteen.”  
“Okay... any family history of depression?”  
“I don’t think so.” I looked at a shape in the carpet that looked like a dog, but its jaw was too wide, sending it screaming into my imagination. It was the most noise my mind had heard in a while. I shut my eyes to shut it out, and it faded, slowly. I opened my eyes again. Privately, I looked down at my sleeves, wondering when he was going to ask me to show what was underneath.   
“Have you been experiencing any thoughts of suicide?”  
“Yes.” I looked back at the carpet to search for the screaming dog, but the dog had transformed into a lion, its shape shifting, moving in the fibers. More roaring in my head. I shut my eyes away from it again.  
“Do you have a plan?”  
“A what?” I looked at him, confused, and suddenly realized how hunched over I had been the entire time. I made an effort to sit up, forgetting that the lion in the carpet was turning into a human face in my mind’s eye.  
“A plan. Do you have a plan to kill yourself?” The orderly / nurse had his pen poised above the paper, waiting for me to respond. I suppose he dealt with people who weren’t present all day, and I appreciated the patient tone of his voice. But now the time had come to reveal my secret.  
“I did. It didn’t work.” I thumbed my sleeve, caressing my wound with my forefinger. I saw no reason to be anything that wasn't matter of fact. They had found out I was suicidal, they would find out what I had done. The time for secrecy was out there, out in the real world. It didn't exist in these yellow halls.  
“What did you do?” The orderly/nurse asked, still patient, still calm.   
I brought my arm up to the table and rolled up the sleeve, revealing an open gash in my wrist, vertical, not bleeding but flesh exposed. I waited. For a moment the orderly stared at it. He nodded slowly, and I put my arm back under the table. “We’re going to have to get some bandages on that. Probably stitches.”  
He continued to ask me questions, but I tuned most of it out. Questions about family history, did I have a history of child abuse, etc. I answered mostly “no”, because most of the answers I didn’t actually know. I had no idea if any of my family had ever tried to kill themselves in any way, so I felt no need to pay attention to most of my answers. Instead I found new shapes in the carpet threads, my mind churning, wishing there was something else to look at. I felt the wetness of my self inflicted wound under my skin and wondered how it all happened, how I ended up there, with that razor, how I ended up here, talking to this stranger about intimate details of my life. Never before had I been in a hospital of this type. A loony bin? No, they frown on that. “Acute psychiatric ward”. Basically only meant to keep me from harming myself or anyone else, meant to stabilize me. I was troubled by this when it had been explained by the emergency room nurse where I was going. I had only gone in to get stitches, had let it slip that I wanted to kill myself. I hadn't meant to end up here. There was no reason to be here, to feel this way. I was troubled by having nothing to blame, no reason for my feeling except the wish to no longer burden loved ones with my sadness. I knew that I would be giving them an entirely new sadness altogether but the thought remained, the solitary, abusive voice, whispered, constantly, that they didn’t need me, and I couldn’t ignore it forever.   
After what felt like hours of me staring at the little shapes in the rug we got up and I was led down a darkened hallway to another room, where my vitals were taken, including weight, tattoos, and scars. I was asked to take off my shirt and shake out my clothing, which I did. Not carrying anything, I was asked to wait as a nurse went to the next room and gathered the necessary items to stitch up my arm.   
“Rough night, huh?” A new nurse asked at the door. I nodded. “Lights out is at ten. Sorry you got here after. Would you like some cereal?”  
“No... I’m good.” I hadn’t had an appetite in about a month. One of my favorite things, cereal, didn’t make my stomach growl, it only caused it to do a meager lopsided lurch. I watched as the nurse nodded and walked away.   
The same nurse who had taken my vitals came in with a syringe and a suture kit. “You ready for this?” She raised her eyebrows and watched as I nervously nodded. The sight of blood made me dizzy, as if I was going to faint, but I figured that if I could hurt myself and be fine, I could let someone else fix it without passing out. She took out some saline solution and began washing out my arm, which didn’t bleed, to my relief.   
“First time?” She asked as she got out a needle with some numbing concoction.   
“Uh.. not cutting, no.” I looked away as she put the needle into the cut and, more than once, injected my arm with the medicine. I made a conscious decision to look away from my arm, feeling the warm blood as the wound was reawakened, it rolling off the sides of my skin and onto a towel the nurse had laid out below. I took a deep breath and shut my eyes. She touched my arm, seeing if I felt anything, but all I could comprehend was a distant sort of pressure. I nodded for her to continue.   
“First time on a ward?” The nurse asked. I heard her open a package, which I assumed were the sutures, and a moment later I felt a pressure in my skin. It didn’t hurt as much as I expected, but then I remembered I’d been numbed. I gritted my teeth and nodded at the nurse’s question.   
“Well, that’s it, you’re all done. Four stitches. Let me get some bandages on that.” The nurse watched me as I breathed out, audibly, and I looked at her to see a concerned expression looking back at me. “You okay hun?”  
“Blood makes me queasy.” I swallowed the feeling crawling up my throat and glanced down at my arm. “It just.. kinda... “ I felt the color drain from my face and saw stars come into my eyes, and then, blackness.  
When I awoke later on, I observed that I was in a bed, still in my clothes. I shifted over to see someone at the doorway with a flashlight and a clip board. They jotted down something and then walked out, leaving the door open. Could I close doors around here?   
I heard a snore and looked to my left to see feet dangling off the end of another bed. I watched my roommate as he turned over, his head lolling on his shoulders, mouth open, eyes closed. He buried his face in his pillow and let out another snore, this one quieter than the first, and hugged the pillow to his face. Slowly, quietly, I sat up. I rolled up my left sleeve, the one that had been stitched up, and was greeted by bandages wrapping around my arm. I stood up and walked to the window, pushing aside some blinds to see snow staring back at me, lit up by a single street light and looking out into a courtyard. For a few minutes I stood there, thinking, wondering how I’d gotten here. I watched as the snow drifted around, blown by the wind and swallowed by darkness. My forehead pressed to the cold glass; it was soothing in a way I hadn’t realized it could be. A bit of pleasure in the world of darkness my life had become.   
I remembered the man who had had the flashlight and clip board as I heard footsteps gently shuffle down the hall. Quickly I jumped back into my bed, rolling over just as a flash light was shown in the door way. I’m not sure how long I laid there, tears gently rolling down my cheeks, waiting for the release of sleep, but I did eventually find my tears slowing, my breathing growing deeper, and my mind drifting away into the unconscious.


	2. 11:43am

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Group therapy doesn't always go well.

"Hey, are you gonna get up or what?"

My eyes shifted open very slowly. I had a blanket wrapped around my chin in a bed that was not my bed. For a moment I forgot where I was, who I was. I looked up to see a very, very tall man looking down at me. I quickly observed a few things: again, that he was incredibly tall. I also observed that he had no wounds on his arms. His hair looked like it hadn't been cut in a while and caused wavy blond locks to go over his forehead and near his eyes, whose color I could not discern from the angle I was looking at him. I looked at the T shirt he was wearing (black) and the pants (blue) and tried to figure out who he was, and why he was standing over me.

"Lunch is in twenty minutes, and the nurse asked me to get you up. She needs your vitals or something."

I sat up from the bed, still holding the white blanket, but letting it roll down to my stomach. I stared at it for a moment, collecting my thoughts. They seemed to want to escape me and run away from me, but I found them and dusted them off - with some difficulty. I remembered it all at once: cut-emergency room - nurse - suicide - ambulance trip - stitches - hospital. Mental hospital.

I looked up at the man standing above me, who was watching me with a curious look. "You must have gotten here in the middle of the night. That's what happened when I first got in - it was like three in the morning or something. They let you sleep in on the first day if that happens, which is nice." He glanced around the room and then stuck his hand out to greet me. "I'm Rhett, by the way."

"Charles." I said, reached out and shaking his hand.

"Charles, that's kind of fancy. Can I give you a nickname?"

I considered this as I took the blanket off of my legs and sat up to stretch, every muscle in my body creaking. "Hmm. Well, my middle name is Lincoln. Sometimes my mom calls me Link."

"Link. I'll call you that." He began to walk towards the door. "I'll be in the day room."

"The day room?" I asked curiously.

"Yeah, it's like the main room. Well, you can sleep through lunch if you want, but there's this nurse, and she's real mean - you better go get your vitals." And then he was gone.

I looked out into the hallway with a mixture of caution and curiosity, unsure of what I might find. This is where they keep crazy people, I thought to myself. Now you're a crazy person, I added, trying to not feel so nervous. You don't deserve to be here, getting help. You're just depressed, the little abusive voice chimed in quietly. I gave it a small nod of agreement, resisting the urge to talk to myself aloud. I certainly did not want to seem more - well - crazy - than I might already.

"Caitlin! Get back here!"

I looked to my right to see a small woman with black hair running down the hall. She ran into a room and slammed the door shut with a loud BANG, which startled me and simultaneously answered last night's question about whether or not one could close their door if they wished. A nurse was walking quickly after her, an annoyed look on his face as he got out his keys and began to fiddle with the door. They had locks, too? Another surprise. I slowly followed the nurse to the door and watched, unsure of what to do, but not scared by the spectacle.

"Caitlin, you have to take your medication."

"No!" A muffled yell came from the other side of the door along with what sounded like Caitlin pounding her fist onto it. "You can't force me to take those shit pills!"

"If you don't take it, I'll have to tell the doctor you're not med compliant." He reached for his belt and pulled out a walkie-talkie. "Code yellow on adult, code yellow on adult." He then turned and looked at me. "She gets riled up sometimes. We just want to keep everyone safe."

"You're the one who isn't safe!" The voice from behind the door was followed by another pounding on the door.

"Caitlin, we've been over this, respect is a two way street in here." He turned back to me. "Sir, please go to the day room."

"I don't know where it is."

"Caitlin, if you don't open this door I do have a key." The nurse's request was followed by more pounding on the door. He turned back to me. "Sir, don't worry. I've got it under control." He blinked. "Wait, you don't know where it is?"

"No."

He pointed to behind me, where a nurse's station was next to an open door. "That way." From it, I saw two nurses - or possibly orderlies- emerge from a locked door and come to the door where I was standing. "You need to go." He said more firmly. I nodded and began to walk down the hall, unsure what to expect.

I walked into the doorway and looked around the room. There were some small tables, like the kind one might find in a middle school cafeteria, with chairs bolted to the floor. They looked very uncomfortable. All around the room were armchairs, leather and brown, worn out. I saw a television was playing something and in one corner an old woman with a small beard was holding the remote. She was watching some kind of sit com, something I didn't know the name of. There were several people in the room, ranging from young (me) to old (the woman in the corner). I glanced and found my roommate sitting in one of the chairs with his legs stretched out, talking to a girl with red hair. I began to make my way over to him.

"Charles?"

I turned to the corner of the room to see a small plastic chair, and next to it a woman in scrubs with a blood pressure monitor. "Are you Charles?"

I nodded.

"Come here, let me get your vitals."

I walked over to her and sat down in the chair. I looked over at my roommate, who caught my eye and waved. I felt a little guilty waving back. I had already forgotten his name. Red?

"Honey, could you take off your jacket?"

"Oh. Sure." I removed the jacket and felt immediately self conscious about the bandage underneath. I expected the woman to comment, but she did not. Instead she simply wrapped a blood pressure cuff around my arm and put a thermometer in my mouth. I looked at my roommate, trying to gauge his reaction, but he had already gone back to talking to the person next to him, a girl who looked young, like she might be my age. I looked back up at the machine and watched as it read my temperature, 97.8.

"130 over 98," She said, removing the cuff from my arm. I nodded, clueless as to what it meant.

"Guys, it's time to line up for lunch."

Everyone in the room got up and walked to the door. I walked up to my roommate, unsure of who else to cling to. "Why do we have to line up for lunch?"

"Because it's just how it is around here. You get used to it. They have to watch us all the time, make sure we don't do anything crazy." My roommate replied. I was surprised by having to look up to talk to him - most of the time, people had to look up to me, so it was a little strange.

"Who's that girl Caitlin?" I asked, unsure of what to say, how to go about things in this environment.

"Oh, she's... she's nuts. She was throwing the plastic chairs at nurses yesterday." My roommate watched as my eyes widened with concern. "You don't need to worry about her. Just worry about you."

"Oh." I nodded. "What's your name again?" I asked, figuring there was no way to beat around the bush.

"Rhett."

"Thanks."

"Alright, that's..." There was another person at the end of the line, a woman wearing a pantsuit, who counted us. "Twelve. Okay. Let's go." She then unlocked the door and we began to follow her. "Stay on the right side of the hallway, ladies and gentlemen, right side of the hallway."

"What are you here for?"

I looked behind me at a blond woman, surprised by her bluntness. "What?"

"I'm an addict. Heroin. Opiates. That kind of shit." She narrowed her eyes at me. "What about you? Are you like that bitch?"

"Hey now, no need for that." Rhett piped in, turning around to look at the woman.

"Right. Sorry." The blond sounded ashamed of herself, unsure what to say next. "I'm Amy by the way."

"Charles." I considered putting out my hand to shake, but was caught off guard by a sudden pain in my arm, where my stitches were. I had never thought of stitches as being painful to have before. I consciously gripped my sleeve, hoping that I wouldn't have to take it off again. I looked ahead of me and saw that another patient, the woman whom Rhett had been talking to earlier, had her jacket around her waist. On her right arm was a bandage, bigger than my own. I felt a little bit safer, a little bit less alone, for a second.

We walked through a hallway that had many windows, looking outside to different yards with trees. They were covered in snow, glittering and incredibly bright. I looked away, my eyes watering. The girl behind me, Amy, remained quiet until we arrived at the cafeteria. I looked out and saw it looked like a middle school cafeteria and wondered if at one point this place had been a school.

"You getting a tray?"

"Oh." I watched as Rhett grabbed one from a stack and waited before helping myself. The line moved slowly, each of us waiting for someone to hand us a plate of what looked like old spaghetti. "How's the food here?"

"It's alright." Rhett answered. I watched as a cafeteria worker handed him a plate and began to make mine, wondering if I could eat, wondering what it would be like to really eat a meal. I certainly wasn't hungry. The line moved gradually but before I knew it I found myself following Rhett to a table and sitting down across from him.

"So why are you here?" He asked me, just as bluntly as Amy had. I watched as she sat down next to him.

"I don't know." I picked at my spaghetti, trying to muster an appetite.

"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to." The redhead from before sat down next to me, sitting down on the bench and opening a carton of milk. "I'm bipolar myself." She held out her wrists where I saw several overlapping scars. "No one's going to judge you here though."

"Hmm." I put some spaghetti onto my fork, trying to figure out how to feel normal about this. The people I was meeting - with the exception of the girl who was violent towards the nurse from earlier - were all pretty normal. I had been expecting people talking to themselves, completely shut off from the world, manic people, or people drugged to the point where they were catatonic. Everyone here seemed normal. It felt just like sitting in a high school cafeteria after moving to a new town, not like being in a psych ward. I tried biting down on the spaghetti and found that it was quite tasteless. It crawled down my esophagus, slimy and thick.

"What's your name?"

"Charles."

"I call him Link. Isn't that right roomie?" Rhett looked up at me and grinned. I simply rolled my eyes.

"Link, I like that better than Charles." The redhead concurred. "I'm Maggie."

"Mm." I opened my milk carton and took a swig, trying to wash the pasta down to my stomach.

"It's nice to meet you, Link." Maggie held out her hand to me. I took it, shaking it gently, not wanting to further upset my wound. I looked up at Rhett, who smiled a smile that seemed slightly flirtatious. I looked down immediately, staring straight into my noodles, taking the piece of garlic bread and breaking it in half to chase down the milk.

* * *

 

"Okay, we're gonna do group guys."

I looked up from my fingernails and watched as the woman from earlier, with the pantsuit, strolled over and shut off the television. There were groans throughout the room, mostly from the old woman who had again had the remote. I bit my lip, unsure what to expect. Group? What was that?

“Come on, do we have to?” Amy asked from the opposite corner of the room. “This is all bullshit anyway.”

“Come on now, we’ve talked about language in group Amy. Respect is a two way street in here. If you respect me, I’ll respect you.” The woman in the pantsuit replied in a matter of fact tone. She looked directly at me and I felt my heart jump in my chest. “I see we have a new face. Hi, I’m Laura, I’m the group therapist on this unit.”

“Laura’s awesome.” Rhett added. “Aren’t you Laura?”

Laura smiled. “Rhett, we’ve talked about you letting others be the center of attention.”

“Right. Sorry.” Rhett shrugged. “Just thought he should know how awesome you are.”

“Well, why don’t we learn his name first, hmm?” She looked back at me and smiled that sweet smile of hers. It seemed genuine, which caught me off guard. “What’s your name?”

“Charles.”

“Link!” Rhett added again.

“Rhett, please behave.” Laura said, more sternly than last time. Rhett was quiet. “What do you prefer?”

“I don’t really care.” I said, shrugging. Was there always this much talking? What could they possibly want to know? I had no stories to tell them, nothing to regale them with, no tragic past. I didn’t even know what was wrong half the time. I found myself thumbing my wound, over my jacket, feeling exposed and self conscious.

“Okay, I’ll call you Charles then.” Rhett groaned softly, but Laura shot him a look that could kill and he was quiet once again. “Do you mind telling us what you’re here for?”

“I don’t know.” I answered. I felt extremely small, like an ant under a magnifying glass.

“What sent you here?”

I sat up a little in my chair and looked at the ground. “I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“Okay, we don’t have to talk about it.” Laura said simply. “But talking helps. And if you need someone to listen, just ask, okay?”

I did not respond, not even with a nod. Who could you trust to listen?

My mind wanted to the tile flooring and to the shapes in it. Magnificent fiery beasts were trapped inside, roaring as the lion had in the carpet yesterday. Laura was asking someone else a question - Maggie, I think. I had stopped listening. Who would truly, honestly listen to me? I watched as the beasts turned to people, people who were screaming desperate to escape the flames, and looked up at Maggie, desperately trying to tune into what she was saying.

“...that’s why I think maybe it was rape. I’m not sure though, because it started off as not rape, you know?”

I grew increasingly self conscious at this. Rape? Abuse? I was not like these people, not like her. She had been through real hell. What had I been through?

“Well, you said you asked him to stop, right?” Rhett piped in, looking at her. “You know it’s not your fault.” I watched as Maggie nodded, looking away, tears springing into her eyes and rolling down her cheeks. I looked back into the flames but now saw myself, screaming, but now without reason. I bit the inside of my cheek, wishing it would stop.

“Maggie, it sounds like you’ve been through quite a lot.” Laura’s voice was practical, honest. “Thank you for sharing that with us.”

“Can I go next?” Rhett asked, raising his hand politely.

“Yes, Rhett. How are you feeling today?”

I looked curiously at Rhett, remembering that he hadn’t said why he was here before. I wondered what trauma was in his past. Abuse? Drug related? Alcoholic father? What was I going to learn about the man I was sharing a room with?

“Well... you know, shit - sorry, stuff - like that makes me feel pretty weird about myself.” He wrung his hands together and looked over at Maggie. “I’m sorry, I’m still mad about your stuff. You shouldn’t have been through that.” He looked back at Laura. “It’s just weird when you’re thinking about killing yourself and you haven’t been through anything. Or you feel like it wasn’t enough, like it wasn’t enough to drive someone to want to do that.”

“So you’re still having suicidal thoughts today?” Laura asked, quiet, observing.

“Yeah.” I watched Rhett as he leaned back into his chair. “I have them all the time. But it doesn’t feel like there’s a reason. Or like, there’s enough reason.”

“I think a lot of people in here probably feel that way.” Laura sat in one of the plastic chairs and looked around the room. I did, too, seeing many nods, hearing many murmurs of agreement. “Depression is an illness, Rhett. It isn’t your fault. There doesn’t have to always be a reason.”

I reached into my sleeve and felt my bandage, swallowing hard. I looked over at Rhett, who was surprisingly serious, compared to how he had behaved earlier. He nodded slightly, seemingly afraid of giving away his emotions.

“I think that’s something important for all of us to remember. Just because you can’t see it, that doesn’t mean it’s not there.” Another voice, a voice from someone whose name I didn’t know, was offering reassurance. “And it’s okay to admit that you don’t know why. It’s an illness. It doesn’t need a reason.”

“That’s exactly right Joan.” Laura looked back at Rhett. “I’m sure you’re not the only person in here blaming this on themselves, or looking for something to blame. Sometimes, there isn’t anything to blame, and it can be frustrating. But it’s important to remember that just because there isn’t anything to blame, that doesn’t mean it isn’t real.”

I felt like the fire in the floor was going to swallow me up if I sat there any longer. Surely, surely there had to be a reason. I was a waste of space, a waste of time. I was a fool. I was everything wrong and everything that would be wrong. That wasn’t reason enough, but it was my reason. I felt my breathing growing faster, anxiety in me rising.

“Charles, are you alright?” Laura asked, walking towards me.

I stood up from my chair, avoided her eyes, and walked out of the room, wiping tears away from my face, trying to reconcile my abusive thoughts with what had just been said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments help my ego. Let's be honest. No, but really, constructive criticism is always welcome. I know talking about mental illness is difficult. I hope this makes someone out there feel less alone.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a lot of experience with this and decided to fictionalize some of it. Also comments give me life.


End file.
